Thanks for your response, but one man's meat is another man's poison.
Assigning letters at boot time implies 'fixed' and a degree or permanency but these cards are removable. Assigning addresses to non-existing removable devices feels like a deficiency more than a feature.
Where is the advantage to having drive letters assigned at startup for devices that may never be used? If you use any kind of automated procedures which check the devices available they puke on a card address that has no card loaded.
> Think how confusing it would be if the drive designator changed
> depending upon which flash was inserted first.
I don't see how that is confusing at all, but if you want consistent designators you can get them through the Control Panel e.g. assign your CD-RW to Z: instead of D: and it will be that way on future reboots.
USB sticks, USB drives, USB CD-Rs, etc have their addresses automatically assigned when they are inserted, which disappear when removed. The addresses are added to what is active at the time, and always appear at the end of the device list.
> This assuming you may be using more than one flash card at a time.
There is no loss of function with dynamic addressing, two cards, two addresses.
- USB devices are removable. If they are not plugged in at boot time they do not get an address.
- Cards in these readers are removable. If they are not plugged in at boot time why should they be given an address?
If one address e.g. B: or x: was permanently assigned at boot time to the USB controller for these cards then fair enough, the first card plugged in can use it. If a second card is plugged in that can be dynamic.
The floppy has such strong historical links that A and B are permanently reserved for floppies, but no such criteria exists for flash cards. Nothing seems more pointless than having permanent addresses to all the removable devices which do not exist at boot time.
I asked the forum because if internal card readers have not progressed to dynamic addressing I don't want one.
